Performance Reviews

It’s almost the end of the year, and performance reviews for many companies are just around the corner. This will be the first time for me sitting on the other side of a performance review. I’m excited, and to be honest, a little nervous about how it will all play out. I know our HR manager has done an excellent job putting together our initial take on performance reviews, but it’s still going to be up to me to ensure that all aspects of a performance review are communicated properly to my team. It’s definitely going to be an interesting time of year!

I’ve started doing a little bit of reading on performance reviews. From what I can tell, the general consensus is that most performance review systems are flawed and nobody knows the perfect way to do them. That’s kind of scary actually. So, like anything, I started questioning all the aspects of performance reviews that I can think of. So things like: What’s stack ranking? Why do companies stack rank? What are alternatives? What about leveraging teammate-driven reviews? etc… There’s a whole lot for me to learn, so I need to start by questioning everything.

With that said, how do you do performance reviews? Have performance reviews been working at your organization? Do you stick to “the norm”, or do you have your own interesting spin on performance reviews that make them effective for your organization?

Articles

Employee retention is not just about pizza lunches and parties: On the surface, things like candy stashes, catered lunch, and all other shiny perks seem like a great way to get and keep employees. However, keeping employees engaged is the sum of what attracts them to the company and what keeps them motivated while they’re working. Recognizing their accomplishments and giving them challenging and meaningful work is an awesome start.

7 Reasons Your Coworkers Hate You: The truth? You probably know at least one person at work who does at least one of the things on this list. The harder truth? You probably do one of these yourself. It’s a pretty cool list put together by Ilya Pozin. I’d suggest a quick look!

How To Inspire Your Team on a Daily Basis: In this article by James Caan, he echoes one of the things I wrote about recently. You can’t expect to have a motivated team unless you lead by example. You really shouldn’t expect anything from your tea unless you are going the lengths to demonstrate that your dedication to the team and the team’s goal.

humility = high performance and effective leadership: Michelle Smith write about how humility is actually a great leadership characteristic. A couple of the top points in her article include not trying to obtain your own publicity and acknowledge the things you don’t know. The most important, in my opinion, is promoting a spirit of service. You lead because you are trying to provide the team guidance and ensure every team member can work effectively.

The Surprising Reason To Set Extremely Short Deadlines: This one might not be the same for all people. I think that anyone that tries to apply this as a blanket statement is probably setting themselves up for failure. How do you feel about short deadlines? Some people tend to work really well under pressure and having short deadlines. For those that do, this article offers a perspective on why. Under pressure, you operate creatively given your restricted set of resources, and you don’t have time to dawdle and let things veer of track. Interesting to read.

Eliciting the Truth: Team Culture Surveys: Gary Swart talks about something I think is extremely important for all businesses. Maybe your work culture is established, but where did it come from? It’s easy for people to get together in a room and say “we want to have a culture that looks like X”. It’s harder to actually have the culture you say you want. Gary suggests you do a culture survey to actually see what your work culture is like because… well, who knows better? A few people sitting together in a room, or everyone in the company?

You Are Not a Number: With year-end performance reviews and the like coming up, I thought it would be interesting to share this short article by Dara Khosrowshahi. Do you stick to stack ranking? Do you have in-depth conversations with employees about their performance? Have you tried switching things up because the canned approach just wasn’t delivering?

Which Leads to More Success, Reward or Encouragement?: Deepak Chopra analyzes the positives and negatives of using rewards and using encouragement as a means of driving success. The takeaway from Deepak’s article is that using rewards is not a sustainable means to motivate your team, and actually tends to create separation within the team. By leveraging encouragement, you can empower your team to work together and self-motivate.

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Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween, everyone! I hope those of you who were out and about with your own little ghouls and ghosts had a safe Halloween this year.

Halloween costumes were pretty creative again this year at Magnet Forensics. I tried going with my own Horse Lime attempt, but it’s difficult when not many people know what the Horse Lime actually is. Regardless, my awesome mother put together the lime portion of my costume, and I was extremely grateful for that (and yes, I’m in my mid 20’s. No judging). I think it turned out pretty damn good.

This year, Saige won our Halloween costume contest. As Old Gregg, it was hard for that to not be a sure-fire win. Complete with Bailey’s in hand, I think the only thing that could have made it better was a set of watercolours to go with it. Absolutely awesome job.

On behalf of Team Magnet, Happy Halloween!

Articles

Kenneth Cole’s 10 Keys to Success: In this article by Teresa Rodriguez, we get a list of 10 tips from Kenneth Cole on success. While I don’t think there’s anything groundbreakind about them, I do think they’re all relatively straight forward. My main take aways are being innovative, being passionate about what you do, and create value. This article also has a bit of background on Mr. Cole that I wasn’t even aware of, so that was pretty interesting.

Community is Everything: How to Build Your Tribe: This article was kind of unique. It doesn’t necessarily apply directly to startups or business, but I see lots of parallels. Miki Agrawal writes about creating a “tribe” or a community of people around you. It’s really about placing positive people in your life, or go-getters in your business for the parallel. Again, no monumental secret tips in here, but it’s a great topic.

Performance Recognition: Cutting the Cost of Disengagement: This one is an infographic (and not really an article) about engagement and performance recognition. There are a lot of stats in there, but regardless of whether or not I trust the accuracy, I think the general points made are sound. Essentially, there are a lot of disengaged employeed in the global work force and it hurts productivity. By creating a culture of recognizing performance, you can help boost engagement which has all sorts of positive effects.

Code Review Like You Mean It: The first programming article for this week. Phil Haack discusses how to actually code review effectively. One of the key topics is taking breaks from long code reviews so you can maintain focus. Another is forgetting about the author when reviewiing and focusing solely on the code. Phil even put up his own code review checklist and suggests you have your own. Personally, I think I’ve kept a mental one but it probably would help to have it solidified.

Converse, Don’t Complain: This article by Hiroshi Mikitani had the most buzz from the things I shared this week. It really seemed to hit home with people, and I imagine it’s for a couple reasons. First of all, if you’re honest with yourself, you probably complain. You probably chat with at least one colleague you’re really close with and just flat out complain with them. You both don’t like something, so you vent. That’s definitely a comforting activity, and sometimes we need it. The flip side is you have authority or responsibility over something that people have problems with. Nobody is voicing any concerns to you (since they are just complaining among themselves) and if they are, there aren’t solutions being brought forward.The first of this two part solution to this is instead of whining, start coming up with potential solutions. It doesn’t matter how big or small your ideas are, start thinking about what a solution might be. The second part is communication. If you want something to get resolved, you need to bring your concerns with potential solutions forward. If you only complain and vent to one person, your concerns won’t be heard. If you only ever whine about something not being correct, then you’re doing a half-assed job at trying to come to a solution.

Lead by Example and Emulate Ideal: This one is a plug for my own article. I decided I’d write about why leading by example is actually more powerful than some people think. You have a lot of eyes on you as a leader, and you may not realize it. By leading by example and emulating the attributes you consider ideal, people will catch on to it.

Keys to Productivity: I’ve sort of noticed this through my own experiences so far, but early morning and late at night are great times to be productive. When there are a lot of stresses on you during the day, sometimes it feels like you’re not being productive. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you aren’t, but it’s your own perception. Getting a head start on the ay by getting into the office early, or staying up late for your own creative endeavours can prove to feel really rewarding.

Build Trust Through Training, Transparency and Trials: I’ve shared articles from this series by Jake Wood before, but this is another standout one for me. Trust isn’t something you can just put into your company values or your mission statement. Trust is something you have to live out each and every day in your organization. We can all say we value it, but if you aren’t willing to live it out, then it’s not something you truly value. One quote I really like from the article is:

Here Is What Smart Companies Get That Others Don’t: The first of the three points offered in this article is that smart companies think differently. They are leaders and not followers when it comes to everything they do. The second is that they sell their culture. Their culture is actually core to their business and their organization, not some after thought. The third is that they help others become smarter. Provide value and become something that other people and business want and need to use.

Why Good Strategies Often Fall Apart: Ron Ashkenas highlights a few reasons why strategies that look great sometimes just don’t work. The first two points he makes in his article are the ones I want to highlight. The first is passive aggressive disagreement. Not everyone is going to be on board with all parts of all changes, so you’re going to have people that disagree. If the culture does not actively embrace people being able to voice their concerns, it’s difficult to carry out a successful strategy. Individuals might complain, but they wont end up doing anything about it. The second is something along the lines of “being too nice”. Trying to avoid confrontation because you’re afraid of it is a recipe for disaster. If you actually encourage open communication and trust, then being able to have hard discussions about something can be really powerful.

Three Things that Actually Motivate Employees: This probably isn’t new to a lot of people, but money (after a certain point) isn’t the driving force for employee motivation. The three things outline in this article are mastery, membership, and meaning. Employees want to be able to mastery their skill sets, learn, and get better at the things they do. Individuals within the organization want to have a sense of community. They want to feel like they align with the people they work with and their working toward a common goal. Employees also want to work on something that has meaning. Work that has a large positive impact is extremely motivating.

Happy Halloween! Remember to follow Dev Leader on social media outlets to get these updates through the week.

Background

Leadership has become a big focus for me as I start to grow more into my role at Magnet Forensics. As a developer, I feel like it’s easy to gain basic knowledge and experience with unfamiliar programming territory just by surfing The Internet. With leadership, that’s certainly not the case for me.

What’s my most recent realization? Lead by example if you expect anyone to take you seriously. As a young leader (and with little professional experience in a leadership role), I think this becomes especially important. When you lead by example, you’re showing others that you’re really behind what you’re preaching.

Lead by Example: A Simple How-to

Maybe it’s obvious, but I really don’t think I’m over simplifying my message when I say it. To lead by example, you just do what you expect other people to do. Obvious, right? If you’ve been working for long enough, you’ve probably had a boss that you thought was doing a poor job. There’s many reasons for this, and I don’t want to turn this into a negative-dwelling-unhappy-rant party, but one such reason is it felt like they were just passing down orders to you.

What’s more disengaging than having someone that’s locked up in a room come out every couple of hours to assign you a new task? This boss of yours was doing a poor job of demonstrating meaning to you. Why was doing what he or she was telling you to do was the right thing-the thing that’s going to help get the company to the next step? He or she was not using what I would now call leadership rule #1: lead by example.

Okay. So you’ve envisioned the times when it sucked. We’re off to a good start, because hopefully things can only look up from here. What would you have done differently if you were in your old boss’s shoes and you wanted to inspire an alternate-universe-you to do a good job? There’s probably a handful of things you can think of (and for certain people with certain bosses, maybe that handful is multiple gorilla-sized handfuls).

What if your boss, your manager, or your leader had actually sat down with you and guided you through their expectations? What if the first time through a particular task you sat together and worked through it as a team? What if there was nothing left unclear and you could truly get behind what you were being told? I’m sure you wouldn’t feel resentful of the almighty boss throwing down orders like lightning bolts from the heavens if that was the case.

But why? Here are a few reasons:

The clarity of expectations becomes established. There’s a lot less guessing work. Being able to establish clear expectations at work is key to building trust and having successful teams.

You buy in. When someone can lead by example, they’re proving to you why they value something. It’s a lot easier to get behind them compared to someone else who has never proved their knowledge, skills, or experience to you.

It becomes more like a peer relationship when receiving work. Initially, you feel like you’re shadowing someone that you can more easily relate to. When it comes time to take the reins, you don’t feel like you’re pulling your manager in a carriage behind you.

Emulate Ideal

As a leader, you’d be shocked if you realized just how much of an effect you have on other people. You don’t have to be the CEO or manage 100 teams of 100 people to have the influence either. The even more surprising part? A lot of your influence is actually not a conscious effort on your part. Boom.

The reason I’m suggesting that as a leader you should be emulating ideal is because people will pick up on it. People see how you act, whether good or bad, and will learn to emulate your own behavior. If you’re a hard worker who gets things done, your teammates will learn that that’s what drives the team’s success. If you’re always putting down people’s work, then it will be the norm for nobody to really have an appreciation for the work of others. If you’re watching YouTube and surfing the net all day, that’s now acceptable behavior for everyone else. Repeatedly show up late for or flake out on meetings? Don’t be surprised if meetings become less effective. Constantly encouraging people and acknowledging their successes? You’ll start to see others praising each other. These might be generalizations of course, but if everything else is aligned I’m sure you’ll see these kinds of trends.

This truly is often overlooked. Once you’ve gained respect from people and you have their attention, your actions will have a big impact. So now instead of expecting your team members to act in accordance of what you think is ideal, why not live it out yourself? They’ll automatically start making the transition, especially if you’ve clearly communicated your expectations to them.

Summary

You get the most buy in from others when you lead by example, and you’ll become much more effective as a manager or leader. You have your own expectations of what ideal is, so it’s important to communicate them with your team (Side note: expectations go both ways. Make sure your team’s expectations of an ideal leader are properly communicated to you). One of the best ways you can communicate your expectations through leading by example regularly, and you drive the point home by emulating your definition of ideal.

Extras

If you’re looking for a bit more on how and why to lead by example, consider these links:

I work as a team lead of software engineering at Magnet Forensics (http://www.magnetforensics.com). I'm into powerlifting, bodybuilding, and blogging about leadership/development topics over at http://www.devleader.ca.